Letters to the Editor, June 12

San Francisco Chronicle

June 12, 2015

Photo: Darryl Bush, SFC

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Author Vincent Bugliosi talks as he signs his new book for people who attended his speech about his book on the John F. Kennedy assassination called, "Reclaiming History," at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, CA, on Tuesday, May, 29, 2007. photo taken: 5/29/07
Darryl Bush / The Chronicle
** Vincent Bugliosi (cq)

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Author Vincent Bugliosi talks as he signs...

C.W. Nevius, thank you for “S.F. school board is certain it knows best” (June 11). I live across the street from Aptos Middle School, yet the San Francisco Unified School District wants to place my daughter at Marina Middle School next year. They want my wife and I to drive across the entire city twice each day rather than have her just walk across the street. They don’t consider this a hardship for us because she can take Muni. An 11-year-old girl taking a 50-minute bus ride (with a transfer) across the city is acceptable to the school district. They make us feel as if the problem is with us. Thanks for letting us know that we aren’t alone in thinking that it’s time for a change.

Ed Mcmillan, San Francisco

Blame rent control

Thank you for “S.F. seeks to curtail ‘eviction specialist’” (June 6). For more than half of a century, my family owned one of the properties sold to this person. We chose to sell when the younger generation realized that we were ill-equipped to own a property in San Francisco. We were expected to keep the property in safe, working condition (not unreasonable, of course) by paying market rate for repairs while the tenants paid decades-old rental rates. One tenant rented her apartment out on Airbnb, paying us a fraction of those proceeds in rent.

Another tenant, mentioned in the article, sublet her apartment as her only source of income. While she paid us $600 per month for a three-bedroom apartment (with a storage room) in North Beach, she would sublet her whole apartment for $4,000. We had no legal recourse to stop her. In a free-market economy, I cannot think of another arrangement where someone can legally earn income by commandeering another person’s assets. Our family was outsmarted by this clever tenant and her only misfortune was that we sold our property to someone even more clever. Rent control created this situation.

Cathy Mathews, Menlo Park

True to faith

The writer of “Church doctrine” (Letters, June 11) defending Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s actions as being part of mainstream Catholic ideology is well taken and should serve as a wake-up call to all more tolerant Catholic and non-Catholic populations. The Catholic Church has held for millennia that it, and it alone, is the one true church established on Earth by Jesus Christ. During its glory years up until the Protestant Reformation, the church enforced this self-proclaimed assertion with impunity by brutally torturing and killing anyone who dared to speak out against its absolute authority.

The infallibility of the pope on matters of faith and morals was, and continues to be, one of their staunchest bulwarks against dissent. Since the early 1960s, the church has softened its tactics, but it has never changed its goal or accepted the idea that there are many religious and nonreligious paths to salvation. So we should be grateful when people such as Cordileone publicly and vocally promote the extreme social positions that are part and parcel of the church’s archaic message. He does us the favor of pulling back the curtain and revealing the true face of Roman Catholicism.

Frank Losik, Salinas

Blame Harris

“A college fraud tuition break” (Editorial, June 10) failed to mention that Heald College had graduated tens of thousands of students and placed them into meaningful careers in the nearly 150-year history of the school before being bought by Corinthian Colleges five years ago. This entire fiasco is a result of California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ grandstanding in preparation for her Senate run.

Corinthian was forced to sell Heald College as part of the punishment and was negotiating with two buyers when Harris insisted the $30 million fine be paid by the new buyers as well as any future litigation. This obviously was a deal breaker, and Corinthian College was forced into bankruptcy, putting thousands of students and employees out of school and work. The fine should have been waived and the school sold to new owners. Harris forcing the fine triggered the closure and turned a no-gain for taxpayers into a now, as The Chronicle has reported, $3.5 billion taxpayer loss. It doesn’t take a college degree to realize Harris is not looking out for the people.

Wayne Flora, Ripon, San Joaquin County

Farewell, Bugliosi

The Chronicle should have put the news of Vincent Bugliosi’s passing on the front page. Bugliosi may very well have been the finest prosecutor this nation ever produced. Bugliosi was a prosecutor who employed the tact and wiles of the most crafty defense attorneys, and his lucid and readable account of his prosecution of Charles Manson and his clan (“Helter Skelter”) was the first true crime book I ever read. Even better was “Outrage,” about the acquittal of O.J. Simpson, where Bugliosi again clearly presents the multitude of mistakes made by the prosecution in what should have been a conviction. I do not agree with Bugliosi’s assessment that Lee Harvey Oswald alone assassinated President Kennedy, which Bugiosli’s showcased in his voluminous (and most thorough) account of the assassination. Yet, the book is filled with provocative theories as to why Bugliosi came to that conclusion.